I'm not able to access my music, pictures or videos. How can this issue be solved?

I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 if that helps any.

Open a Terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and run this command (by pasting it in, or typing it in exactly, and then pressing enter):

cat ~/.gtk-bookmarks

Then select all the text in the Terminal (Edit > Select All), copy it (Edit > Copy), and paste it here. Please note that this will list all of your Nautilus bookmarks, which might be a privacy issue. For example, if you are a doctor and you've bookmarked a folder containing a patient's documents, then you could inadvertently be posting your patient's name here. Therefore, you should look over the text you've pasted here, before submitting it.

This should provide useful diagnostic information for solving your problem.

Also, is "file not found" the complete text of the error message? If not, please post the complete, exact text of the error message that you receive when you attempt to open these folders from the Places menu.

I did as you instructed, but that still did not resolve the issue. "file not found" is the complete list of text in the error message. Now what should I try? I really don't want to have to completely re-install the entire OS, I have spent too much time setting it up and getting it just the way I want it.

http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1667615

The idea of Eliah's command was to get some information, not to fix the issue. All cat does (in any OS) is to output the content of the file so will change as much in your OS as opening an image with eog.

I suspect your MIME types have become skewed, the link will fix you up ok.

You do not need to reinstall Ubuntu to fix this problem.

As I said, the purpose of running the command "cat ~/.gtk-bookmarks" was *not* to solve the problem, but to reveal information about the problem. Running that command does not change anything. It just provides information. To help you, I need that information. Is the reason you didn't provide it that it contains private information? (Only in a tiny fraction of cases does that command produce private information. Look it over and see.) If not, please provide it. That is, select all the text from the Terminal and paste it here.

If you've already closed the Terminal window, open a new one, run the command again, select all the text from the Terminal, and paste it here.

Here is the text you requested. Hope it helps.

stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ cat ~/.gtk-bookmarks
file:///home/stevenshown/Documents
file:///home/stevenshown/Music
file:///home/stevenshown/Pictures
file:///home/stevenshown/Videos
file:///home/stevenshown/Downloads
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ cat ~/.gtk-bookmarks
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$: command not found
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ file:///home/stevenshown/Documents
bash: file:///home/stevenshown/Documents: No such file or directory
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ file:///home/stevenshown/Music
bash: file:///home/stevenshown/Music: No such file or directory
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ file:///home/stevenshown/Pictures
bash: file:///home/stevenshown/Pictures: No such file or directory
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ file:///home/stevenshown/Videos
bash: file:///home/stevenshown/Videos: No such file or directory
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ file:///home/stevenshown/Downloads
bash: file:///home/stevenshown/Downloads: No such file or directory
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$ stevenshown@ubuntu:~$
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$: command not found
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$

It was only necessary to paste the text from the Terminal here. It was not necessary to paste it back into the Terminal and try to run it as a set of commands. Fortunately, no harm came of it.

It seems that actionparsnip is correct. Your bookmarks file is intact and its entries are correct (and appear to match what you see in the Places menu). Therefore, try the solution at http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1667615. If that doesn't work, please let us know, so we can continue working with you on the problem.

Thank you very much. That took care of all the folders, except for the videos folder. When I click on it I get an error message that reads. "Could not display "/home/stevenshown/Videos". The location is not a folder. How can I correct this problem? I access my videos more than anything and right now at the present time the only way I can access them is to step through all the processes to access them in my Windows location. (I am running a dual boot system with Ubuntu running alongside of windows xp.

In your post, the text "The location is not a folder." is not in quotes along with "Could not display..." Are you telling us that Videos is not a folder? In that case, please explain what you mean, Or was that text in fact part of the error message you received?

If you go to Places > Home Folder and double-click on Videos, are you able to access your videos?

Also (whether or not that works), please open a Terminal window and run this command:

file ~/Videos

Then paste the text from the Terminal here.

where it says the location is not a folder is not in quotes. The only part that was in quotes was "/home/stevenshown/Videos". And in the error box right below it was where it said The location is not a folder. When I go to Places and double click on Videos that's when I get that error message. Here is the text that comes up when I type the command in the Terminal window:

/home/stevenshown/Videos: symbolic link in a loop
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$

Was your Videos folder previously a symbolic link to some other folder? (It's OK if you don't know the answer to that question.)

Please post the output of the command:

ls -l ~/Videos

Do you have your videos somewhere else? What did you mean when you said "step through all the processes to access them in my Windows location"? If your Ubuntu system is dual-boot with Windows, you should be able to mount your Windows partition and access them there. If they are on a Windows computer on the same local network, you should be able to access them through a network share. Neither of these typically involves complex or time-consuming procedures.

The reason I'm asking about that is that when a folder that contains files becomes a symbolic link in a loop, this is an indication of possible filesystem corruption (and potential data loss). It will be a good idea to scan your Ubuntu system's filesystem for errors and repair any errors that are found...but it is possible that the output of the above command will reveal useful information, so please go ahead and run that first.

Also...in the original problem description, you said you tried rebooting in recovery mode. What, if anything, did you attempt to *do* when in recovery mode. If you ran any commands, do you recall what they were?

I don't know think my videos folder was a symbolic link to some other folder. The videos that I cannot access at all are duplicate files of what is stored in windows as well (I transferred them from an external hard drive prior to installing ubuntu) because I did not know about how to share the files between the 2 OS s. the output of the command you me to run is:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 stevenshown stevenshown 24 2011-02-14 15:21 /home/stevenshown/Videos -> /home/stevenshown/Videos
stevenshown@ubuntu:~$

where it says /home/stevenshown/videos is all highlighted in red when I ran that command, although the red highlighting did not come out in the copy/paste process.
I have no idea if my videos are even still intact or not. every other file is still there, and all other issues are solved. But this one is the only one I tried to correct, and that screwed it up.

"But this one is the only one I tried to correct, and that screwed it up."

Please explain what you mean. What did you do? When did you do it? Why do you think that caused this problem? Is this from when you were in recovery mode?

This happened after I did the recovery mode. The recovery mode made no change in the system at all. When I saw that I could drag the video folder to the desktop and access the videos then, I attempted to drag it back from the desktop back into the video folder in places, and that's when it all went wrong. When I installed ubuntu, I used wubi to install it, because I'm not very comfortable with re-partitioning the hard drive. Could this actually have contributed to the problem? After I ran the recovery mode and saw that it did not change anything, and then noticed that I could drag the folders from places to the desktop and have access to the files, I first tried to repair the videos folder first. When I saw that this created additional problems, I stopped and contacted technical support.

Perhaps you ended up moving the videos elsewhere. I recommend you go to Places > Search for Files... and search for words contained within the filenames of some of your videos. By default, this will search inside your home folder...which is where you should look, first. Also search for the name "Videos" (since you may have moved the entire Videos folder out somewhere else).

If you find them, you can delete the self-referential symbolic link at /home/stevenshown/Videos and replace it with a new Videos folder containing the videos you've found.

If you don't find them, I'd recommend using fsck to check your filesystem. If you need help with that, please feel free to post again.

I just tried going to Places>Search for Files, but it said there were no files found. Then I searched for "Videos", and it showed a folder, but it was only for a 24byte broken link. So hopefully fsck will help. I do need help with that

To try to help speed things along, I went ahead and ran fsck, and this is the text that came up:

fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
e2fsck 1.41.12 (17-May-2010)
/host/ubuntu/disks/root.disk: recovering journal
Clearing orphaned inode 285076 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 285098 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 266716 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 264052 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 265284 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 281816 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 281207 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 281128 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 266713 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100600, size=1)
Clearing orphaned inode 281804 (uid=1000, gid=1000, mode=0100644, size=3499)
Clearing orphaned inode 558907 (uid=0, gid=0, mode=0100644, size=112596)
Clearing orphaned inode 568533 (uid=0, gid=0, mode=0100644, size=9847080)
Clearing orphaned inode 262367 (uid=0, gid=0, mode=0100644, size=26112)
Clearing orphaned inode 262363 (uid=0, gid=0, mode=0100644, size=715404)
Clearing orphaned inode 262357 (uid=0, gid=0, mode=0100644, size=187144)
Clearing orphaned inode 262353 (uid=0, gid=0, mode=0100644, size=140788)
/host/ubuntu/disks/root.disk: clean, 199114/1073152 files, 1564776/4286464 blocks

Thank you very much, this solved my problem. I do however have one more question. If I were to do a true dual-boot install with the normal installer rather than wubi, would that solve the problem of my video playback freezing up when I play them in full screen mode? And while I'm running Ubuntu is it possible for Windows to crash? If that is possible then I will be re-doing the install. The way I have it right now does make Ubuntu run a little bit slow (but still much faster than windows).

Thanks Eliah Kagan, that solved my question.

"If I were to do a true dual-boot install with the normal installer rather than wubi, would that solve the problem of my video playback freezing up when I play them in full screen mode?"

Probably not, but maybe. If it did fix your problem, it would more likely be the result of reinstalling, rather than specifically the result of reinstalling as a standalone (i.e. non-Wubi) system. However, I suppose it's possible that the increased file access and swapping performance associated with a standalone installation might potentially ameliorate that problem, at least partially.

If you have not already done so, I recommend posting a new question about that issue. It is likely that someone can help. However, if you are immediately about to wipe out your Wubi system and reinstall Ubuntu alongside Windows, then you may want to wait and see if the problem occurs in the new Ubuntu installation, before posting your question.

"And while I'm running Ubuntu is it possible for Windows to crash?"

No. While you're far more likely to mess up your Ubuntu installation from within Windows with Wubi than you are with a standard Ubuntu installation, Windows is not actually *running* at the same time as Ubuntu in a Wubi system. With Wubi, Ubuntu is installed "inside" Windows in the sense that the Ubuntu filesystem is mounted from a disk image file that is stored inside your Windows (NTFS) partition. But when you boot up and select Ubuntu, Ubuntu runs *instead* of the Windows system whose partition it resides inside. (Similarly, when you boot into Windows, Ubuntu is not running.)

It's worth mentioning that it is actually possible to run one operating system *inside* of another in the strong sense that they are both running at the same time (and that the host system can crash and thus cause the guest system to crash too). This is called virtualization, and you can do it with software like VirtualBox or VMware. You can virtualize a Windows system inside a Linux-based (e.g. Ubuntu) system, or a Linux-based system inside a Windows, or you can virtualize one Linux-based system inside another or one Windows system inside another. Since they run at the same time, you can use functionality from each at the same time. You can even have multiple virtual machines running simultaneously (assuming you have enough RAM to accommodate all of them). I think many if not most user's users as not well-met by virtualization (it's complicated, and most users don't need to use both Windows and Ubuntu at the *same* time). But it's pretty neat, I do it all the time, and it is totally different from the way Wubi works.